The United States, Japan and South Korea have strongly condemned North Korea’s recent ballistic missile launches in a joint statement that followed a US move to impose sanctions on those associated with Pyongyang’s weapons programme, Al Jazeera reports.
A US-led effort to tighten United Nations sanctions on the North after it carried out nearly two dozen missile launches this year, was vetoed by Russia and China on Thursday.
It was the first public split in the Security Council over North Korea since the initial sanctions were imposed in 2006.
“The DPRK has significantly increased the pace and scale of its ballistic missile launches since September 2021,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Japanese Foreign Minister Hayashi Yoshimasa, and South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin said in the statement released on Saturday morning, referring to the country by the initials of its formal name the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
“Each of these launches violated multiple UNSC [United Nations Security Council] resolutions and posed a grave threat to the region and the international community. We urge the DPRK to abide by its obligations under UNSC resolutions and immediately cease actions that violate international law, escalate tensions, destabilize the region, and endanger the peace and security of all nations.”
The US sanctions targeted “supporters of the DPRK’s WMD and ballistic missile programmes, as well as foreign financial institutions that have knowingly provided significant financial services to the DPRK government,” Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian E Nelson said in a statement.
